Open:Monday to Saturday for dinner. Reserve for omakase meals three days ahead;masayoshi.ca

To riff off Samuel Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I’ve felt — at times — there’s sushi, sushi, everywhere, and nothing exciting to eat.

It’s getting much better. I’d hustle like Usain Bolt to Tojo’s or Kishimoto and likewise to Miku or Minami, Sushi Bar Maumi,Zest, Blue Water Cafe and Toshi Sushi. Those are top of mind. Recently, I went with neighbours to their favourite haunt in our neighbourhood, Sakura Ichiban in Ambleside; it’s been there forever and gone through several ownership changes. I was really impressed with the current chef and the sashimi and sushi. I’m sure there are places like that in other suburbs.

And I finally hoofed it to Masayoshi in Fraserhood, which is getting to be a cool restaurant enclave in east Vancouver. Owner Masayoshi Baba spent 10 years as a sushi chef at Tojo’s while general manager Tomo Uchida worked front of house there for about six years, and there’s been growing buzz about Masayoshi. Service issues have dogged the first year, but there’s no denying the food quality and its artful presentation. The room is small and cheerful with a milky white glass chandelier, bonsai and Baba at the sushi counter.

The interior of Masayoshi restaurant on Fraser Street in Vancouver.Handout

Our server’s mantra was “sorry for the wait” with every dish, which was unnecessary — a reaction, perhaps, to earlier criticisms? When we phoned for a reservation, we were told there would be two seatings, at 6 p.m. and at 8 p.m., but they could squeeze us in at 6:30 if we didn’t mind slower service. I didn’t understand why, but we didn’t notice a lag in service at all. I did notice a preponderance of Japanese customers, young and old, always a good sign.

To streamline service, Baba stopped serving maki sushi (rolls) and take-out orders and now focuses on two omakase tasting menus (a nigiri one for $80 per person and “original creation” for $120), a la carte nigiri and some hot and cold appetizers. He said he’s thinking down the road that he might even pare it down to omakase menus only.

Baba once worked in a fugu (pufferfish, a deadly delicacy in Japan) restaurant in Japan and is licensed to serve it but, alas, the thrill of a possible tryst with death is gone since non-poisonous fugu can now be farmed. “The poison came from the food they ate in the wild,” he said.

Chef Masayoshi Baba at work in his Masayoshi restaurant in east Vancouver.Mia Stainsby /
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I mentioned concerns about the bluefin tuna on his menu (they’re down to 2.6 per cent of their original biomass in the ocean), and Baba said he uses farmed bluefin tuna from Japan, understanding concerns with wild bluefin (he’s received many e-mails about the issue). Farmed bluefin has a “very similar taste” to wild, Baba said.

Claire Li of the Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Wise program has a slightly different take on this. She said that while there have been bluefish tuna farming breakthroughs in the last couple of years (before, “farming” entailed rounding up juveniles and fattening them in open-sea net pens) Ocean Wise still doesn’t doesn’t recommend it. “They are an apex predator, on the very, very top of the food chain and they are in open-net pens,” she said. “It’s about the sheer amount of fish they need to consume for every pound of production.”

And here I thought it was my go-ahead to eat bluefin tuna!

Unfortunately, omakase requires a three-day advance notice, so I ordered a la carte. I noticed some of the dishes going to omakase diners were the same as ones we had ordered. One off-menu item we noticed was the melodramatic dashi soup, made in a reverse osmosis siphon coffee system, not so much for flavour as for theatre.

The salmon salad ($12) turns heads. It arrives in smoky allure under glass; the server lifts it and campfire-like smoke wafts out. The salmon is lovely and sits atop julienned burdock and Japanese pear.

The salmon salad at Masayoshi in east Vancouver.Mia Stainsby /
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Chawanmushi ($12) was sheer satin, bejewelled with golden fish eggs on top and, as you reach the bottom, you spoon up bites of white fish.

The chawanmushi at Masayoshi in east Vancouver.Mia Stainsby /
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When uni crosses the Atlantic, it turns into luxury food. A sashimi serving at Masayoshi, with four pieces, was $32 and very good, but I couldn’t help but remember buying a nice-sized box of it at the famous Tsukiji Market in Tokyo for $16.

The uni sashimi with fresh wasabi at Masayoshi restaurant in east Vancouver.Mia Stainsby

I had crab, eel, horse mackerel and tamago nigiri, and the seafood was super fresh, the tamago amazing. It’s tall, chestnut-hued and a cross between a custard and a cake. It takes two hours in the tamago fry pan and Baba admits to some secret ingredient for the texture and colour. The crab was shredded, making for clumsy eating as both the rice and crab fell apart. You can opt for freshly ground wasabi (grated on sharkskin) for $1 extra per nigiri or order a mound of it, the size of a small macaron, for $11.

The one dessert, tofu cheesecake for two ($7), like the chawanmushi, was satiny smooth.

On the day I talked to Baba, the Original Creation Omakase was to include the smoked salmon dish I described, an octopus bowl (jellied, served with Dungeness crab, wild hibiscus), grilled sablefish marinated in kasu, and a paper hot pot or kami nabe (shabu shabu in a fireproof paper pot).

It’s Baba’s first restaurant and he’s a talented, impassioned chef, reaching for glory; I think he’s a little overwhelmed running his first restaurant without a lot of backup at this point. It takes a lot of work to run a place of this quality (he’s the sole sushi chef and he has a cook in the back kitchen for the appetizer dishes). Give him more time, more resources, more breathing room, and the world will be looking for Fraser Street.

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